On the Hills of Eden

The party’s wagon continued trundling along, the sky overhead slowly fading into an ominous grey despite the fact that it was still early in the morning.

In all honesty, the Town Hall had warned them that it was highly likely that a storm of moderate intensity would roll in and last for the entire day. Even still, the four of them decided to continue with the plans they’d drawn up the previous night, given that the sightings of ataphoi recorded by the Town Hall never exceeded threats higher than what Soleiman had to face off against on his and Rumi’s first night in the woods. Plus, given what they’d done to the Protoataphoi and that they had all– excluding Soleiman– grown significantly since leaving Minerva, they were pretty confident that whatever could appear at the Living Cemetery would be of little worry to them.

They couldn’t afford another day’s stay at the inn, anyway. And if they were to tough out the rain in their wagon, they’d at least do it while getting work done at the same time.

Rumi shovelled the last of the trail mix into Soleiman’s mouth, the two of them watching as the curious sight of the so-called Living Cemetery came into view.

From where they were atop a nearby overlooking hill, all they could see were a bunch of strange coffins; unburied and simply laid about in a somewhat circular pattern. Some of them were draped in cloth, some others were left bare. Some were smaller than others, and some had been visibly chained shut by locks.

They parked their wagon just atop that hill, Soleiman grabbing a spare lantern he and Pallas had bought just the night before in case it got any darker than it already was. Qingxi took with her her axe and a hunting knife and Rumi brought the Xiafan Blade along too.

When they descended the hill, they noticed that the coffins weren’t the only things there. In fact there were actually regular graves, their small headstones forming yet another circular pattern within the perimeter of the unburied coffins.

Though perhaps the word ‘coffin’ may not be the best way to describe the boxes.

For they were more like prisons. Small, cramped, mind-numbingly claustrophobic boxes from which the lifeless faces of the tortured and contorted stuck out of.

Each corpse had been provided two holes; one where their face would be forcefully held out of by a collar just slightly larger than the hole’s circumference. And another, where they could stick a hand out of, though the second hole was always positioned in a way that they would have to bend their confined bodies in nigh impossible ways to actually be able to reach.

Some of the corpses even had to stick their feet through the second holes.

And though why such an arrangement had been established eluded the party momentarily, they found their confusion answered soon enough when their eyes landed upon the bowls of maggot-infested meat and rotten berries placed just by each box’s face hole.

“What…” Rumi stuttered, shuffling a little bit closer to Pallas. “What are we supposed to do here again?”

“We have to count the number of captives still alive,” she responded distantly. Evidently, the Ahd were just as brutal with the other tribes under them as they were with the Minervans. “Then we report that back to the Town Hall.”

“How are we going to tell if they’re alive or not?”

Qingxi approached one of the boxes on the opposite end of the cemetery from their wagon. She thought she’d seen a strange human-like shadow disappear just beyond a hill directly behind it, though it was hard to tell given the sudden fog that had just descended upon the cemetery. She couldn’t even use her hearing to try and make up for the lack of light too, since the northerly wind that carried the beginnings of the storm with it had drowned out almost all other sources of noise.

Howling with all its might.

She blew a swift current up the nostrils of the corpse, flushing the stale air out of its nasal cavities and provoking no response.

“I’ll do the checking,” she said, turning back to face the three of them huddled about each other. “Just keep an eye out for anything for me.”

So they did, waiting in the centre of the formation as Qingxi went in a clockwise direction, checking each and every last boxed prisoner for any signs of vitality.

It kept getting darker. How it could have ever possibly gotten so intensely dark when it should’ve been day was unanswerable. Even though the rain still hadn’t fallen, it was as if the stormy sky itself had descended upon the rolling hills of the corridor. Snuffling out the light of the lantern.

Snuffling out the air that they breathed. Like smoke.

In the corner of her eye, Rumi caught a glimpse of something yellow. Vibrantly yellow. And, upon closer inspection, it was a lemon. Fresh and new, placed atop a pile of putrid meats and fungus-covered fruits in one of the bowls set by the boxes.

When she turned around, though, she no longer saw Pallas or Soleiman.

It was just her. Alone.

She opened her mouth to call out to them, the winds of the storm whipping about her face and throwing her fluffy hair about. Stealing away her voice.

Until she heard footsteps, slowly approaching her.

From the other side of the box.

She put her hand on the hilt of her blade, shuffling back and into a stance– just in time as a little glimmer of orange appeared before her.

She unsheathed the blade, the winds bound within roaring out in opposition to the storm and cleaving open the smokescreen about them. It surged forward, rippling through the smoke and the shadow, slamming against the cloaked body of a Hashashin and sending the man tumbling into the body of his comrade just behind him.

The winds fell silent and the smoke faded away; the other man hit by the attack seemingly having been torn from the concentration he required to maintain the smokescreen.

And the other three turned to see as the two Hashashiyyin lay atop one another, dazed by the windblade.

A flame suddenly burst into being behind Qingxi– she swivelled around just in time to raise her hand, feeling as a red-hot blade pierced the gap between the bones in her forearm.

The rest of the man’s body impacted her, sending the two of them sprawling against the ground as he fought to keep her sliding against the dirt. He raised his other hand up to the sky, holding firm his blade with his other to keep her locked in place as a sinister amber glow grew into being behind him.

He slammed his hand down, aiming directly for Qingxi’s bandaged face.

Only to be sent careening back up into the sky, her boots having buried themselves deep into his abdomen; the winds she mustered up blasting him away.

“Qingxi!” Pallas yelled.

But the man soon sprung back into action, landing hastily before rocketing forward to close the distance between them.

Qingxi shuffled backwards, avoiding frenzied blow after blow as he tried to snatch back his blazing hot blade from its place in her now partially burnt forearm. Landing the third of three blows, he blasted Qingxi backwards, the thick fabrics of her gi just barely sparing her skin from the intensity of his flames.

She slammed against a box, feeling as her back snapped the desiccated arm of a corpse in doing so. At once, she leapt upwards, rolling onto the top of the box as the man slammed his fist into its wooden shell, splinters and smouldering embers showering the air about him.

She threw herself into the air using a violent blast of wind, the box soon exploding into a shower of smoke and wood and flesh; the smell of burnt meat soon permeating the air surrounding it.

The man shuffled back just in time to avoid as his blade returned to the ground before him, Qingxi following not soon after to cleave the earth with her axe as he threw himself back again.

Meanwhile, a fourth Hashashin had appeared, surging from a hill just beyond his two dazed comrades to rush towards Rumi, shrouded in flame.

He swung at her with his fists twice, swooping forwards each time to create wide arcs of billowing fire as she leapt backwards to keep him at distance. Before she could sheathe her blade, though, he surged forwards again, throwing himself into a somersault through the air and calling forth a wheel of flame that roared after his foot. He slammed that boot of his down upon Rumi’s skull, the only thing stopping it from tearing her head from her neck being the cool steel of the Xiafan Blade that she had raised to block the hit.

The blade deflected the kick, knocking it away from her. But her guard had been broken, and from his lowered stance he rocketed back upwards, aiming a killer uppercut directly at her chin.

Leaving the bones in his attacking forearm shattered and splintered, a beam of blood having bored straight through it mid-swing.

Pallas slammed into his body, forcing her boot against his ribcage and sending him rolling back to join his two comrades.

“What the hell is going on?” Soleiman asked, glancing exasperatedly, the four Hashashiyyin suddenly engaged in combat with them.

“I don’t have a clue,” Pallas replied. “Just kill them! And stay back, Soleiman!”

The three then sprung into action, surging towards them with incredible speed and vaulting over the boxes to close the distance.

“Get the Minervan!”

Rumi shuffled to the side, watching as two Hashashiyyin she had cleaved slammed into Pallas’ blood-covered arms with their perfectly synchronised fists, driving her back along with them and leaving the one with the broken arm to face down with Rumi.

Sliding backwards, she watched as the one who had initially been struck by Rumi’s windblade charged her headfirst, coating his fists in flame. He swung once, and then twice, Pallas weaving each wild attempt to beat her head off of her shoulders. Then, spying an opportunity, she buried a left jab into his liver in turn, forcing him backwards as she clenched her right fist in preparation to knock him out.

At least, until she felt a wave of heat wash over her back.

“Pallas!” Soleiman yelled.

She aborted the punch, twirling about to her left to just narrowly evade a spear of flame emerging from the hands of the other Hashashin that had thrown her back. Carrying on with the momentum of her twirl, she spun into the air, slamming her boot into his face with a backwards roundhouse kick to send him stumbling backwards. She pushed him away with that kick, landing some ways away to put distance between them.

Not that it mattered, for the firefist had already surged into place for a second assault. She slipped the first hook but got caught on the second, the heat and shock of the impact startling her even through her blood armour. Dazed as she was, she saw within her periphery as his legs shifted, ducking downwards just in time as he swung a roundhouse kick directly to where her head had been.

Feeling as the haziness of the blow quickly faded in the face of her roiling anger, she clenched her fist; readying the building pressures of blood within it as she aimed to blow open the man’s abdominal cavity with a punishing attack.

But the heat of the flame had roared into being again, and Pallas leapt back just in time as the other Hashashin intervened to bring a sword of fire down onto where she was stood; cloaking the entire area barring himself in a billowing cloud of smoke and soot. Undoubtedly, he was the one who had allowed the very ambush to occur in the first place.

She raised her hand, opening her fist up and creating a finger gun. She redirected the building pressure of blood within her, converting it as best as she could and focusing it upon the tip of her finger. She aimed the beam, pointing it squarely at the man’s neck before he could even recover from the swing.

But there came no bloodbeam. The blood within her had simply faded away, leaving her with nothing.

From the smokescreen emerged the firefist, his stained yellow teeth glinting in the amber light of his fist as he drove it into her stomach, forcing her back and knocking the wind out of her.

“No!” Soleiman yelled.

The flameblade moved into position again, reigniting his spear of fire as he threw it directly at her heart.

And she felt the heat of the flame wash over her chest.

It vanished almost as quickly as it appeared, the flameblade crying out in anguish as Qingxi’s axe came flying in from the otherside of the battlefield– narrowly missing the firefist and cleaving the flameblade’s arm cleanly off of his body.

At the same time, Rumi had been facing down the fourth and final Hashashin. This time, though, frozen by the fact that she had sheathed her blade and was primed for an attack, he had chosen not to attack. Instead, they simply stared each other down, locked into a stalemate as they followed the battles of their fellows in their peripheries as best as they could.

Until the flameblade had his arm cut off.

Pressed for time and worried they may lose the fight, the Hashashin surged forth, observing with scrutiny as Rumi positioned herself to unsheathe the blade. He could dodge it, even if only by a hair’s width. He just needed to know which angle the windblade would fly at.

And as the shining metal of the Xiafan sword left its scabbard, he smiled a grim smile.

At once, he leapt upwards, arcs of orange flame tracing after him as the windblade scoured the ground; flying completely horizontally.

And she was open.

He grabbed hold of a ball of searing flame, contorting his body as he prepared to fall upon her with all his might.

Before the blade’s steel shone again, and a second windblade slashed against the skin from his forehead to his abdomen.

The man was thrown back mid-air, sent sprawling as he crashed back down onto the earth, groaning all the while.

Rumi had fired two windblades in quick succession, despite only having unsheathed it once. Payoff for the weeks of practice between the encounter with the Protoataphoi and then.

The battle was turning. And the Hashashiyyin knew it.

The Hashashin Qingxi had been facing off against took advantage of her temporary lack of a weapon, using it to force her away and began a hasty retreat.

“Damn the ambush, just summon the serpent!” He yelled, the other two that had been engaging with Pallas soon heeding his command. “Do it now, Aqil!”

The serpent?

Soleiman paused. He had been frozen with inaction for the past few seconds, but hearing those two words stirred something within him.

The Hashashin Rumi had just blasted slowly stumbled to his feet, his cloak shorn into two by the colossal power of the blade. Blood dripping from the massive cut that ran down his body, he hobbled back as his mates formed a semicircular perimeter about him, staring Rumi down as he did so.

A singular snake coiled about his bleeding neck.

“By the grace of the Lady,” he said, voice trembling as the serpent coiled tighter, flicking its wicked tongue out in perverse excitement. “By the grace of Mount Ahd.”

“Stop him!” Soleiman yelled. “Don’t let him finish the chant!”

“Rip the throat of the bleating-”

A screaming pillar of ice erupted into being just adjacent to the cemetery, sending a man soaring through the air above them and freezing the chanter in shock.

Floating above the cemetery, he threw forth a bolt of cold that struck the grass where the chanter once stood, crystals of ice soon forming atop the soil and cutting deeper into the earth. He then landed in between Qingxi and Pallas, facing down the firefist as Qingxi faced her ambusher and Pallas faced the flameblade.

And in the shock of the moment, nobody did anything.

“Rip the throat of the bleating lamb.”

“Don’t let him finish!” the man yelled.

“Tear away that vain facade.”

Pallas surged forwards, catching the flameblade off guard. Chasing him down as he stumbled backwards she caught his jaw on her fist, driving it into the ground. She swung her shin like a metal bat, smashing it into his face as it fell downwards– snapping it off of his neck and killing him before he even hit the dirt.

She leapt forward to chase down the slowly retreating Hashashin, though a surge of flame that shot out from the firefist stopped her mid-run.

“Burn and scorch and devour all in thy path.”

To her left, the man had called forth a cone of ice, just barely strong enough to deflect the surging current of flame the firefist beat forwards.

And the moment the flames stopped, he rushed forwards, only finding as the firefist had anticipated his reckless advance– matching him blow for blow as they collided their fists in a cloud of smoke and steam.

Meanwhile Qingxi, drawing her hunting knife from within her gi, had managed to throw her opponent onto the back foot. Constantly threatening to split open his neck with the small blade and only her unwounded arm, she did feint after feint, breaking down his guard until eventually she could sneak a jab into his liver. Stunning him for long enough that she could spear the knife into his neck as he keeled over in pain, driving it down the length of his body and spilling his blood across the grass.

“Set ablaze the Order’s flames.”

The firefist disengaged from the clash with the man, letting a singular blow sock him in the stomach to help boost him backwards as he rushed to put himself in between the chanter and the party.

But Pallas and Qingxi had already closed in, and within the next moment his shattered skull met the ground too.

“Slither and thither…”

The chanter had fled even further, his voice now creaking along as blood pooled in his head; the serpent so tightly coiled about his neck he was on the verge of passing out.

“Show all others your wrath.”

He was too far.

“For now I invoke thy name.”

Suddenly, a singular sheen of silver shot through the air, singing its way across the cemetery to bury itself within the man’s chest. Its metal having pierced straight through his still heart.

The two girls turned, seeing as Rumi had been left bladeless.

They had done it. It was over-

The man’s corpse suddenly erupted into a column of searing crimson light as coiling, slithering flames wrapped about his rapidly disintegrating body. Smoke and ash and a perverse heat spewed forth from the pillar of blasphemous fire, roaring as the flames grew to an unbridled intensity. Roaring as they bellowed the name of the Serpent King, completing the invocation in full.

Iblis!

The rolling fountain of fire suddenly whipped into shape, its slithery, wavy form melting into the vague silhouette of a great serpent moulded entirely from burning fire– its eyes covered in searing sparks and its mouth billowing with noxious smoke.

And as it lowered its head to stare down Pallas, not even the heat of its fires could keep at bay the freezing fear that ensnared her beating heart.

It flicked its coiled, burning tongue out, very nearly singing her fringe in doing so.

And then it paused. Jaw partially opened, as if… confused, somehow.

It rose again, pulling away from Pallas’ face.

“The Serpents of Iblis know no end to their hunger.”

The giant python suddenly roared, its heretical form suddenly collapsing in on itself as all the logic and morals and human sense of the world fought back against it in a primordial crusade. It reared its blasphemous head in agony, its blazing jaw opened wide to the dark stormy sky in furious indignation, challenging the very infinity of the clouds.

And it shrieked an awful cry, turning the sky above scarlet with fear as it slowly faded from being, fighting as best as it could to prolong its fleeting life.

Leaving nothing but the red hot blade of the Xiafan sword lying amidst a pile of ash and soot and incinerated bones.

“What was that?” Rumi asked, hurriedly rushing towards the two of them, both frozen in fear.

“I…” Qingxi started, trailing off.

Both unable to say anything.

“Pallas!” Soleiman yelled, running clumsily towards where they were. He grabbed her by her shoulder, shaking her slightly as he stared into her eyes. Distant, unfocused.

Terrified.

“That was a Fire Serpent, one of the Hashashiyyin Order’s strongest assets,” he turned to explain to Rumi, slowly helping Pallas to the ground. “They’re made from the flesh of Iblis himself, the Head of Order. That means he knows where we are now!”

It looked as though Qingxi tried to say something, the bandages where her mouth would’ve been shifting slightly.

“Just who are you?” the man yelled, slowly walking up behind them. “What are you doing here?”

“Sir, please,” Soleiman started. “We don’t-”

“I am the Defender of Minerva.”

They turned to look at her, sat hunched over on the ground, back turned to the man without so much as an attempt to face him. Without so much as an attempt to move at all, or show any indication of emotion.

Talking to herself.

“Soteira,” she continued. Her voice weak, lifeless; a pitiable attempt at reassurance. As if she wasn’t even saying it at all. “And I will destroy the Ahd.”

“Is that so,” he mused, straightening the white hairs of his short, scruffy beard. “And what is the Soteira doing all the way out here?”

“Well, we couldn’t stay in Minerva any longer,” Soleiman piped in. “We had to leave to avoid getting caught and we don’t plan on staying here any longer. We’re just here to escape the Ahd so she can get stronger to defeat them someday.”

“And you plan on doing that by helping them take care of their prisons?”

“What?”

“These Living Cemeteries,” he said, shadow falling upon his furrowed brow as he gestured back at the circle of tombs now behind them. “Are monuments of torture. Fabricated by the Ahd and the Janub to punish and flagellate and force us Sahlbaridis to submit.”

“I… I didn’t know.”

He could see as Qingxi turned slightly in the corner of his eye, positioning herself to blast them out of the way within a moment’s notice. The look of frozen fear still etched on her face like it was a mannequin’s unmoving facade.

He opened his mouth, stopping mid-way to think.

“Yeah,” he responded. “I thought as much. Given, well, what just happened.”

“Mm,” Soleiman hummed, quick to assure him. “We just did it for the money so we’d have enough to last us on the way out.”

“Alright,” he responded. “And your Defender said she wanted to defeat the Ahd, yes?”

“Yeah. To get them out of Minerva,” he said. “And out of the Corridor too,” he added hastily.

“Good, good, I believe that,” he said. “Any enemy of the mountain devils is a friend of us Sahlbaridis. Make your animosity known to any of our kind and you’ll be sure to get along.”

“A-alright…”

“Mm, well, I haven’t much else to say, in that case,” he said. “Except, is that your vehicle?”

He gestured towards the wagon still faithfully parked above the hill just by them.

“Yes, Sir.”

“No wonder you’re so short on cash,” he replied. “Get yourself a sailship if you can, it far outpaces any horse the further north you go. Though only after you’ve left the Ahd, neither they nor their Janubi lapdogs have much empathy for our machines.”

“Alright, Sir. I understand. Thank you.”

“Mm,” he hummed. “Well-”

“Sir, wait,” Rumi cut in. She’d been watching sheepishly from the side, completely unsure of if she should listen in, or if she should retrieve the sword, or if she should do anything at all. Alas, her curiosity eventually got the best of her.

“What about those who bleed blue?” She asked, recounting Chloe’s memories. “Are there really people emerging from the north in hordes and pushing you out of your homeland?”

He huffed, smiling slightly.

“Oh, please,” he said. “Just more smoke sniffing bullshit. Those rumours are just a cover for them to justify cordoning off huge swaths of land. Though really they’re just doing it to force us further south and into competition with the Janub; giving them a reason to do shit like this,” he said, gesturing to the Living Cemetery. “To us.”

“O-oh… I see.”

“Mm. Are you a Solean, by any chance?”

“Yes, Sir.”

“My,” he said. “Impressive. You’re the first Roman I’ve ever seen in person.”

“Oh,” Rumi said, unsure of how to feel. Proud?

“Thank you.”

“Wait, Sir, one more thing,” Soleiman asked. “You said you were a Sahlbaridi, right? What were you doing here, then?”

“Just here to try and save some of my brethren,” he said, his voice sombre– though not sad. “If it weren’t for the Hashashiyyin turning up, I might’ve assumed the worst and tried killing you. But, that didn’t happen, so…”

“Ah, yes,” Soleiman responded, Qingxi giving up on her defensive stance in the corner of his eye. It seemed there was no reason to worry. “Thank you for not doing that.”